In the more than ten years, I have worked in developing security solutions, I have witnessed the steady evolution of security threats and the incredible strides made to combat them. Recent high profile security breaches have shown that a breach in security can have serious consequences.. It can lead to loss or destruction of business assets, bad publicity and its associated effect on a company’s brand, hefty regulatory fines, disruption of services and costs associated with numerous lawsuits. The main task of a hacker is to access business assets through the network without being detected. The threats are normally cloaked within ubiquitous traffic flows such as web or email. Whatever the nature of a threat, an attack leaves signatures behind that can be used to “un-cloak” the threat. Threat defense and visibility is the watchword.

It has been exhausting to many of us, to be constantly engaged in the never ending cat and mouse game we play to manage and detect cyber threats. When it comes to securing private and public clouds, a new generation of Read More »

By Vince Pandolfi, Consulting Systems Engineer, Service Provider The latest Wi-Fi physical layer standard 802.11ac, has been ratified and is enjoying widespread adpotion in the client device marketplace. The hype has been with us for a few years now proclaiming tremendous gains in throughput. The mechanisms 802.11ac uses to gain these speed improvements can also be used to improve client quality of experience and not necessarily just be used for higher data rates. The three key elements of a connect include distance, speed and reliability. These are in most cases mutually exclusive or at least have inverse relationships. You gain distance by trading throughput and reliabilty and gain Read More »

When I look at the sky, I see an infinite number of stars. It is a moment of inspiration when I gaze at the sky in hope of spotting something miraculous. Looking at the Telecom industry and its new innovations, I feel the same. A new star is rising almost every day. Well … to find Cisco innovations and its stars look no further: the Service provider booth at Cisco Live Milan 2015 is bringing everything that you every wished to see under the stardom of the service provider. Please let me take you through the “starlog” of innovations and demos that will be available for you to engage in and learn about how they advance your business.

2014 ended with a flurry of technology conferences in Europe and the Middle East. In November, the European Commission’s (EC) annual Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Conference addressed how to make the EC a 21 Century organization. In December, the International Telecommunications Union Telecommunications Standardization Sector ( ITU-T) hosted a meeting in Doha, Qatar for CTOs. Among the issues discussed were updates on the Global Standardization Landscape, status of Internet of Things Standardization and next generation video technologies and standards. Also in Doha, at the same time The ITU hosted World Telecom whose theme was “Future in Focus: how disruptive developments in technology, business and society are transforming the ICT industry.” All the meetings gave us much to think about for 2015. Günther Oettinger , European Union Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society kicked-off the ICT DIGIT-IT conference by outlining his strategy for achieving a digital transformation within the European Union. He went on to detail specific areas he thought needed the most attention including:

Effective Workplace

Real time administration

Open Data

Collaborative working tools

Security and cyber-security (mentioned as number 1 priority)

Growing usage of Cloud for non-strategic data

Importance of Big Data and Internet of Everything

Openness and Collaboration between the different EU organizations

Attracting young generation within EU, build and retain talent

As Commissioner Oettinger concluded his presentation, I was struck by how similar Read More »

Recently I had the privilege to exchange thoughts at a roundtable discussion about the Future of Managed Services with our strategic partner Presidio. I would like to share some highlights from that dynamic dialogue.

We all agreed, the services industry overall is heading to a tipping point. Managed services are becoming more attractive to IT, and consequently the demand is growing exponentially. Our discussion focused on the key factors driving this demand and what managed service providers can do to stay ahead of customers’ needs.

Business leaders have ever growing expectations for increased IT speed and responsiveness. As the pace of change in business grows ever quicker, IT needs to become “Fast IT” – delivering new solutions at a more rapid pace In order to do that, IT needs to be able to integrate and automate all support interactions that it’s responsible for delivering.

Customer needs can change in a heartbeat. To meet these needs, organizations and service models have to be more fluid in order to adapt to the ebb and flow of the customer’s business. This embodies a new type of relationship between the customer and the managed services provider. Customers may want to use one service model for a few months or for a few years, changing models as the business changes – gone are the rigid, long-term outsource agreements that lock customers into one model for many years. Ryan Jordan, VP of Managed Services at Presidio put it well:

“Customers want more flexibility from their managed services providers. It’s true that just off-loading managed services allows IT to be faster on their feet. But offering a managed service that is also flexible and responsive adds tremendously to the goals of Fast IT.”

A one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work in an era of ever changing business needs. For instance, rolling out a new application and updating the infrastructure to support the trading desks for a global financial services company requires a different service approach from supporting the operations for a hospital.

A standardized cookie-cutter approach gives you better economies of scale, which supports profitability, but can sacrifice the opportunity to customize offerings by industry or customer. This can affect your competitiveness. The future of managed services is in tailored solutions that meet the specific needs of customers and can adjust as the relationship develops over time.

Presidio and Cisco are working together to implement a new model – built on a foundation of real-time service integration. In this model customers, managed service providers and the technology vendors are all connected in real-time. It creates a new level of transparency and collaboration, speeding resolution times and ensuring all parties have a common view of what’s happening as its happening.

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